2You - Virtual World

Proposal
Jesse Jones
Professor Veeder
DAI 627

Title:

2You

In 5 words….

2You is a…virtual friend & personal assistant.

Target member

The target member for 2You is people that are on the go and are moving. In particular young people, from high school to mid 20s. However, active person who likes to explore the world around them can use it as well. Ideally, the amount of time they spend is up to them. However, its designed in such a way that you spend time in 2You throughout the course of your day. 

The technical limitations of this device is that it will only work on smartphones, in particular Android and iOS based devices. In this regard, the target should also be fairly tech savvy, or at the very least be using an up-to-date phone with WIFI and/or 3G capabilities.

Value Proposition 

The target member cares the most about the ability to free and not tied down to something. 2You unlike most virtual worlds and interactive environments, doesn't tie you down to a particular location or place where you must be. It gives the target the freedom to go where they want to go.

World Design Feature Categories

     The key world design features:

a.    Real-world

b.    Geolocation

c.     Interaction between technology and humans

d.    An expression of your inner conciousness

Self 

2You is different in that you don't see your avatar, there is nothing to customize. This is intentional in that the goal is to make your avatar be an extension of yourself and to not seem like a separate entity.

Place

2You is different in that the story behind 2You is…your story. Your life in essence becomes the story. How you interact and explore the space that surrounds in the physical world dictates how 2You will respond to you. If you live in natural settings, 2You will take on more of an ecologist aspect of your persona. If you live in urban settings likewise 2You will become a fellow urban dweller just like yourself. You ultimately dictate your own experiences.

Purpose 

The purpose of 2You is to help you in your everyday life. It challenges you to explore the world around and uncover new things that you didn't realize were there. The primary purpose is exploration and encouraging the user to uncover new things that they didn't know about in their present world. As the target goes about their day-to-day life 2You will assist you in what your doing. Whether it be telling you the weather, or helping you remember something you forgot, 2You is your go-to friend.

Fun Things To Do 

The fun things to do, happen as you use 2You in places you frequent. If you visit Starbucks, let's say, and make a purchase, you'll be a QR code that you can then scan. With the QR code you can give a drink to your avatar, just as you would to a friend. The key component of 2You is relationship building.

Society

The society of 2You is a society of self-goverance. You, the individual, decide how you want to interact. However, because this augmented/virtual world takes place in the real world, you are governed by the laws of the location you are in. 2You does not make you immune to real world consequences of bad actions.

      If you do something illegal, you will get arrested.

One of the key underlying rules of 2You is reciprocity: you get what you give. If you treat your avatar with kindness, your avatar is likely to reciprocate and do kind of things for you as well.

Your avatar is not a subservient zombie, so it's best to treat it with respect since it serves as a reflection and extension of the user.

World Design Plan – Visual Designs 

Interface Components

Out-World Components

In reality most of the 2You interaction centers around real world interactions in the environments around you. Your experience will be different depending on where you are physically. If your in the jungle, your experience would be radically different than when you are in New York.

Research 

Other virtual worlds that were examined are Second Life, There, and The Sims. However, 2You is unlike most virtual world's that have previously existed and so this research didn't help a lot. It helped primarily with generating an opposing concept, to my concept, of an avatar.

Slides

Second Life Event Presentation

Ghost Hunting Maze

For our event we did the Ghost Hunting Maze. The whole premise of the event was a simple maze shooting-game. A game approach we realized as were doing this and afterwards is fairly hard to implement in Second Life. It doesn't necessarily lend itself to this kind of interaction.

Another surprise that we found out after the event is the great difficulty that people had navigating through the maze. This definitely wasn't anticipated. However, I think it added to part of the fun of the event.

Some of the outcomes we realized during this project were the following:

• It's difficult to organize large groups of people in a virtual world
• Right now, its hard for people to engage in tasks of varying complexity
• It is easy for people to get bored if the tasks are too easy or too difficult
• It's hard to anticipate how people would respond to the event, and even certain outcomes and decisions people made were not fully understood.

There were also some minor technical difficulties we had related to the nature of using Second Life objects and giving permissions for using guns and what not.

A lot of these things we could have never anticipated until we actually had our event. Pictured below are some of the images that were taken during our event.